History Schmistory: July 19. CAN anybody open this thing?

1870: The can opener is patented by William Lyman, a good fifty years after the tin can was invented. Luckily all the contents were well preserved.

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By Tomomarusan (This is the creation of Tomomarusan) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons